Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Feminists – United States'
To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Feminists – United States.
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Feminists – United States.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Blaisure, Karen R. "Feminists and marriage: a qualitative analysis." Diss., Virginia Tech, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/37416.
Full textAbstract:
Feminist critiques have demonstrated the problematic nature of marital and family life for women. Feminism has deconstructed traditional marriage and made apparent the potential overwhelming cost to women in financial, emotional, and physical dimensions. However, the experience of feminists who choose heterosexual marriage has not been addressed through research. What is not known is the extent to which such feminists are transforming marriage into a relationship that values both spouses.
This study examined the influence feminism had on the marriage of heterosexual partners who were both self-identified feminists at the time of the study and prior to marriage. The guiding focus of the research asked what happens when feminists, dedicated to equality and the valuing of both spouses, choose to marry. Thus, the following research questions were posed: How do couples describe the impact of their feminist beliefs on their marriages? To what extent do couples talk about having a double consciousness of marriage, i.e., a realization of choosing a relationship that can lead to the devaluation of the woman? How do couples describe and interpret equality and inequality in their marriages? How does gender organize the couples' marriages and lives?
The conceptual framework informing this study was a combination of feminist and general systems perspectives, A general systems perspective provided concepts such as system, process, and context while a feminist perspective elaborated on these concepts to illuminate the sociohistorical and cultural contexts in which women and men live and the power differentials within marriages. A feminist postmodern perspective highlighted the social construction of relationships and gender and the diversity of women's experience while also proposing a political agenda, i.e., criteria of what is liberating for women and a critique of the gendered nature of power differentials.
Qualitative interviewing was the main method of data collection. Participants were recruited through referrals and advertisements placed in regional newspapers and regional and state newsletters of the National Organization for Women. Ten couples participated in the study. Criteria for inclusion in the study included the following: both the woman and the man assumed the label feminist prior to marriage; they believed women had historically and culturally been devalued and they worked against that devaluation in their own relationship; they were married for at least 5 years; and they were willing to be interviewed jointly and individually. The 20 participants (10 couples) were white, highly educated, and middle- to upper middle-class. They ranged in age from 30 to 77 years old. Length of marriage ranged from 5 to 22 years; the average was 11 and 1/2 years.
A mixture of being raised by parents exhibiting behaviors typically associated with the other gender, the impact of the second wave of feminism as it hit college campuses in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the observation or direct experience of discrimination either in the classroom or in the workplace created a fertile soil in which the origins of feminist beliefs were encouraged to take root. Sharing similar world views was crucial in the couples' development of a relationship in which the woman felt safe to critique direct and observed instances of gender injustice. Men also initiated and participated in this criticism, thereby indicating their support of feminism.
The blend of traditional and feminist ideological roots produced a reclamation of marriage. Couples described feminism as influencing their beliefs about equality within marriage by providing standards for interaction and motivating women to demand appropriate treatment and men to demand more from themselves in terms of relationship work. They discussed the double consciousness of married heterosexual feminists by relating their strategies for interacting with one another and the larger society. Through the process of communication, the couples built equality, but at times, i.e. through discourse, they also concealed inequality. Participants’ lives were organized by the gendered experiences of feminism as life-saving for women and life-enhancing for men.
Moments of subordination and moments of empowerment were present in these marriages. The women described their attempts at going beyond the false dichotomy of children or career and the stereotype of the super woman to a form of marriage that required a second adult in the home who was willing to take on parenting and household responsibilities. These attempts were easy for some couples and more of a struggle for others. However, in all of these marriages, evidence existed of women's and men's dedication to equality and choices for women, awareness of the privileged status of men in society, and arrangement of their relationships to benefit women as well as men. Feminism provided the ideological and practical guidance to couples for this reclamation of marriage.Ph. D.
2
Edwards, Eric M. "Breastfeeding, inequality, and state policy in the United States /." Connect to title online (Scholars' Bank) Connect to title online (ProQuest), 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10068.
Full text
3
Al-Shamma, Gabriela M. "Our Bodies Below the Belt: Navigating Agency in Childbirth in the Contemporary United States." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/672.
Full textAbstract:
Within this thesis I examine Western practices and conceptualizations of childbirth from three distinct angles, with the goal of better understanding how one can negotiate agency in contemporary childbirth. First, I outline the history of the medicalization of childbirth in the West, using a reference frame of the famous second wave feminist text, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Next, I conceptualize agency in the context of contemporary childbirth, first defining the ‘agency’ that I am working with, and then outlining some of the factors that play into the negotiation of agency in one’s childbirth; some of these factors include race, class, location, and information provided about specific medical and physical procedures. Finally, I destabilize the hegemonic Western understanding of labor and birth pain by situating pain as culturally constructed and contextually specific. I provide a few examples of ways in which we can reconceptualize pain in a way that situates it as a unique experience for each individual. The end goal of this thesis is to contextualize current childbirth practices within a specific history of medicalization, and to illustrate the complex nature of agency, but the importance of it to a childbirth in which the mother feels as safe and supported as possible.
4
Enck, Suzanne M. "Leading the antifeminist movement : a feminist analysis of Beverly LaHaye's rhetoric." Virtual Press, 1995. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/941722.
Full textAbstract:
This study examined gender portrayals in the rhetoric of Beverly LaHaye. As the president of America's largest women's organization (Concerned Women for America), LaHaye has generated an enormous pool of rhetoric which is steeped in traditional gender expectations and conservative values. The thrust of LaHaye's perception of appropriate gender roles conceives of females as submissive and males as dominant. Despite her seemingly derogatory stance toward females, LaHaye's rhetoric and organization have proven remarkably popular and satisfying among American women.This analysis explored the schism between the feminist movement and antifeminist movement (as led by LaHaye) to determine how to best serve women. This study found that LaHaye holds a predominantly male worldview. This examination also found that LaHaye blends typically male and female communication styles to render an effective method of conveying her ideas.LaHaye's formula for helping women provides insight into the need for expansion of both the feminist perspective and feminist criticism as a method of rhetorical analysis. Further, this analysis presents the feminist movement with a challenge to offer women more choices about how to best conduct their lives in a manner that is personally fulfilling. This study maintains that among those choices should be the equally-respected option of being a "traditional" wife and mother.Department of Speech Communication
5
Blanshay, Susan. "Jessie Sampter : a pioneer feminist in American zionism." Thesis, McGill University, 1995. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=23708.
Full textAbstract:
Life for nineteenth century American women was full of restrictions and limitations. Frowned upon or simply not permitted to enter "male" spheres of activity such as professions, business and politics, many middle class women turned to philanthropy and reform work as the sole acceptable outlet for their energy, talents, and time. American Jews of German descent adopted the "Victorian ideal of womanhood" popular in the United States at this time, propelling many German-Jewish women to engage in charitable Zionist activity despite the general lack of support for Zionism in America earlier in this century. Among this group of bourgeois German-Jewish women involved in American Zionism was a poet, Jessie Ethel Sampter, whose contributions to the movement far exceeded those of the norm. Despite her limited Jewish education and upbringing, and extreme physical limitations, Sampter emerged as a pioneer feminist and Zionist, both in America and in her adopted country, Palestine.
6
Mullet, Dianna Rose. "Catalysts of Women's Success in Academic STEM: A Feminist Poststructural Analysis." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2017. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1062911/.
Full textAbstract:
This study analyzes senior women faculty's discourses about personal and professional experiences they believe contributed to their advancement in academic careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The purpose of the study is to understand factors that activate women's success in STEM disciplines where women's representation has not yet attained critical mass. A poststructuralist emphasis on complexity and changing nature of power relations offers a framework that illuminates the ways in which elite women navigate social inequalities, hierarchies of power, and non-democratic practices. Feminist poststructural discourse analysis (FPDA) methods allow analysis of women's talk about their experiences in order to understand the women's complex, shifting positions. Eight female tenured full professors of STEM at research-focused universities in the United States participated in the study. Data sources were in-depth semi-structured interviews, a demographic survey, and curricula vitae. Findings will help shape programs and policies aimed at increasing female representation and promoting achievement at senior levels in academic STEM fields.
7
Haddad, Khristina. "Women, AIDS, and invisibility in the United States : using feminist theory to understand sources and consequences of definitions." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=68098.
Full textAbstract:
The practical project of this thesis is to create a critical account of the experiences of women in the AIDS crisis in the United States. The theoretical project is to refine a concept of invisibility of various kinds of problems and obstacles women have been confronted with. The question that both parts of this project seek to answer is roughly the following: "What is it that we can learn about improving the lives of women by looking at the AIDS crisis as a lens into American social conditions at the end of the Twentieth Century?" Feminist theories provide a basis for this inquiry as well as the theoretical work on a concept of invisibility.
8
Neumann, Caryn E. "Status seekers: long-established women’s organizations and the women’s movement in the United States, 1945-1970s." The Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1135871482.
Full text
9
Neumann, Caryn E. "Status seekers long-established women's organizations and the women's movement in the United States, 1945-1970s /." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1135871482.
Full text
10
Haynes-Clark, Jennifer Lynn. "American Belly Dance and the Invention of the New Exotic: Orientalism, Feminism, and Popular Culture." PDXScholar, 2010. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/20.
Full textAbstract:
Belly dance classes have become increasingly popular in recent decades in the United States. Many of the predominantly white, middle-class American women who belly dance proclaim that it is a source of feminist identity and empowerment that brings deeper meaning to their lives. American practitioners of this art form commonly explain that it originated from ritual-based dances of ancient Middle Eastern cultures and regard their participation as a link in a continuous lineage of female dancers. In contrast to the stigmatization and marginalization of public dance performers in the Middle East today, the favorable meaning that American dancers attribute to belly dance may indicate an imagined history of this dance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted on the West Coast of the United States and Morocco in 2008-2009, I explore American belly dance utilizing theoretical contributions from feminism, Foucauldian discourse analysis, and postmodernism. I argue that an anthropological investigation of American belly dance reveals that its imagery and concepts draw from a larger discourse of Orientalism, connected to a colonial legacy that defines West against East, a process of othering that continues to inform global politics and perpetuates cultural imperialism. But the creative identity construction that American women explore through belly dance is a multi-layered and complex process. I disrupt the binary assumptions of Orientalist thinking, highlighting the heterogeneity and dynamic quality of this dance community and exploring emergent types of American belly dance. Rather than pretending to be the exotic Other, American belly dancers are inventing a new exotic Self. This cultural anthropological study contributes to a greater understanding of identity and society by demonstrating ways that American belly dancers act as agents, creatively and strategically utilizing discursive motifs to accomplish social and personal goals.
11
Lawrence, Anne. "Feminist Design Methodology: Considering the Case of Maria Kipp." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2003. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5538/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis uses the work and career of the textile designer Maria Kipp to stage a prolegomena concerning how to write about a female designer active during the middle of the twentieth century. How can design historians incorporate new methodologies in the writing of design history? This thesis explores the current literature of feminist design history for solutions to the potential problems of the traditional biography and applies these to the work and career of Kipp. It generates questions concerning the application of methodologies, specifically looking at a biographical methodology and new methodologies proposed by feminist design historians. Feminist writers encourage scholarship on unknown designers, while also they call for a different kind of writing and methodology. The goal of this thesis is to examine how these new histories are written and in what ways they might inspire the writing of Kipp into design history.
12
Hodges, Sushmita. "Women and education : social feminism and intellectual emancipation in England and America." Virtual Press, 1989. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/720136.
Full textAbstract:
Social Feminism, as influenced by the Enlightenment, manifested itself between 1780 and 1860. An important aspect of social feminism was intellectual emancipation for women. Such intellectual emancipation came about through the blending of ideas emanating from prominent cultural and social centers in the western world. Women had been absorbing the reformist ideas of the Enlightenment philosophies, incorporating them into their own lines of thinking, and producing a social theory aiming at educational freedom for women. The individual efforts to initiate change in time reached beyond national boundaries through the pioneer social feminists' literary works and word of mouth. It is the intent of this dissertation to examine and analyze the linkage between the concept of social feminism and educational emancipation.The purpose of this research is to establish the significance of education as a major branch of social feminism within the context of the women's movement. To overcome language barriers that prevented research into other countries' women's movements, I have restricted this study to England and America and developed the concept of transatlantic feminism.Between 1780 and 1860 the women's "question" in England and America gained its theoretical foundations. Although there was no organized feminist movement, societies in both countries were being made conscious of the problems stemming from the subordinate status of women. This social awareness resulted from the tracts and discussions of certain male philosophers and of various exceptional females who focused on the question of women's rights and other related issues.The major emphasis during this early stage of the women's "question" was the issue of education as a vehicle for elevating the position of women. The education of available to women at that time was limited in nature. Training caring mothers was what social feminists protested against in their writings and discourses. Yet they understandably differed in their aims and formulas for change. Some spokeswomen, while accepting the societal status quo, promoted education as a means for women to recognize their moral superiority. There were yet others who demanded a "separate but equal" education so that women could exploit their full potential and, in some cases, assert their economic independence. All these social reformers, through their own unique experiences, also set examples for their contemporaries and future generations to follow.Despite some inconsistencies in their approaches to educational reform for women, almost all of the individual feminists discussed in this dissertation felt that intellectual emancipation would pave the way for improved social standing for women.Department of History
13
Dossett, Kate Maria. "Bridging race divides : black nationalism, feminism and integration in the United States, 1896-1935." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.616088.
Full text
14
Wilkey, Cynthia L. "Womoon rising : feminist spirituality and its impact on the modern women's movement in the United States /." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487948807587762.
Full text
15
Gabbert, Jeri Patricia. "The voice of an American icon : a feminist analysis of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton." Virtual Press, 1999. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1136704.
Full textAbstract:
This study examined the rhetoric of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Specifically, this analysis explored the relationship between Clinton's rhetoric and her public image. In addressing this issue, Foss' (1989) framework for feminist criticism was used to examine three key components: 1) the type of gender roles that Clinton describes and advocates in her rhetoric; 2) her gender portrayal of the first lady role; and 3) whether any alterations in her enactment of the first lady have helped or hindered the feminist cause. Clinton's rhetoric is focused on the empowerment of women, their children, and their families. Clinton's rhetorical perspective is aligned with a liberal feminist ideology and declares that women should make their own choices and should not fall victim to traditional patriarchal values and societal expectations. This analysis further reveals that Clinton combines feminine and masculine rhetorical styles to overcome the contradictory expectations that are placed upon women speakers. This analysis indicates that Clinton's image and role as first lady has fluctuated as she has grappled with societal expectations. Throughout Clinton's tenure in the White House, America has become more comfortable with her redesigned role as first lady. This analysis contributes to the lives of women by providing a model of a female rhetor who is successful despite the confines of a patriarchal society. In addition, this examination also legitimizes a woman's right to fight for equality and to use alternative ways to raise a family. Further, this analysis indicates the need to expand communication models to encompass a rhetor's blend of communication styles.Department of Speech Communication
16
Minton, Tamara Warner. "Male Socialization Experience in Two Birth Cohorts." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1998. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279402/.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of this research was twofold; a quantitative examination of male socialization patterns along with an assessment of change over time in male socialization experiences. Men born in the 1950s and men born in the 1970s were compared to obtain an understanding of male socialization processes and possible changes since feminist issues have become a prevalent source of discourse in society. A survey questionnaire was utilized with a modified snowball sampling technique to explore male socialization experience. One hundred and one men participated in the project. Socialization experience for the men in this sample was five dimensional and while certain dimensions revealed change over time, others remained static. Findings indicate that quantitative measures can be successfully employed to study socialization processes.
17
Allen, Diane F. "MFK Fisher : food and feminist identity /." Fogler Library, University of Maine, 2004. http://www.library.umaine.edu/theses/pdf/AllenDF2004.pdf.
Full text
18
Kreydatus, Elizabeth A. "Marketing to the 'liberated' woman: Feminism, social change, and beauty culture, 1960--2000." W&M ScholarWorks, 2005. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623483.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation is a study of the influence of the women's movement on the marketing of beauty products between 1960 and 2000. The first and last chapters study feminist critiques of normative beauty standards and explore the challenges feminists faced when they tried to effect cultural change.;While the dissertation is framed by analysis of feminist engagement with beauty culture, the bulk of the dissertation examines beauty industries, focusing on the ways that these industries reflect debates over woman's identity and status. Chapter two traces the marketing of perfume between 1960 and 2000 by chronicling changing advertising campaigns as marketers adapted to and participated in social change. The third chapter explores the direct sales strategies of Mary Kay Cosmetics, a company dependent on independent consultants, typically women, to market its products. Finally, chapter four details the genre of beauty advice books and articles, focusing on how the tone and content of this advice has been shaped by the social world of the advisor. By looking specifically at these beauty industries, these chapters demonstrate the ways that ordinary Americans engaged with feminism in their professional lives.;These case studies illuminate late-twentieth-century debates over womanhood, sexuality, and femininity that took place within the business world and the culture at large. Ultimately, this dissertation offers a clearer picture of the interconnections between beauty marketing and feminism, highlighting the ways in which social movements affect the industries they critique.
19
Usman, Irianti. "Surviving prejudice a feminist ethnography of Muslim women living and studying in Middle Town, Indiana, United States /." Muncie, Ind. : Ball State University, 2009. http://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/768.
Full text
20
MacKeen, Alison. "From discovery to creation : feminist literary criticism's aesthetic turn." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=59590.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis challenges the way feminist literary criticism has been represented as a field polarized between American and French positions. As an alternative to the American/French distinction, I propose one between feminist criticism oriented to research and feminist criticism oriented to aesthetics. In keeping with this alternative distinction, I relocate the shift in feminist criticism within American feminism. The "aesthetic turn" inaugurated by American "gynocriticism" is itself identified in relation to a more general philosophical shift from discovery to creation. While the relativistic and voluntaristic tendencies which distinguish the latter pole are exemplified by French feminism, I argue that they are anticipated by American feminism's "aesthetic turn." Finally, this thesis not only relocates and redefines the shift in feminist literary criticism, but provides arguments in favour of a research-oriented feminist criticism.
21
Yelverton, Brittany. "The representation of women's reproductive rights in the American feminist blogosphere: an analysis of the debate around women's reproductive rights and abortion legislation in response to the reformation of the United States health care system in 2009/10." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002949.
Full textAbstract:
This study investigates the representation of women's reproductive rights in the feminist blogopshere during 2009/10 United States health care reform. Focusing on two purposively selected feminist blogsites - Feministing and Jezebel- it critically examines the discursive and rhetorical strategies employed by feminist bloggers to contest the erosion of women's reproductive rights as proposed in health care reform legislation. While the reformation of the U.S. health care system was a lengthy process, my analysis is confined to feminist blog posts published in November 2009, December 2009 and March 2010. These three months have been designated as they are roughly representative of three pivotal stages in health care reform: the drafting of the House of Representatives health care reform bill and Stupak Amendment in November 2009, the creation of the Senate health care bill inclusive of the Nelson compromise in December 2009, and the passage of the finalised health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and supplementary executive order, in March 2010. This study is informed by feminist poststructuralist theory and Foucault's conceptions of discourse and power - an appropriate framework for identifying and analysing the unequal power relations that exist between men and women in patriarchal societies. Foucault conceives of discourse as both socially constituted and constitutive and contends that through the constitution of knowledge, discourses designate acceptable ways of talking, writing, and behaving, while simultaneously restricting and prohibiting alternatives, thereby granting power and authority to specific discourses. However, Foucault also stresses the multi-directionality of power and asserts that though hegemonic discourses are privileged over others, power lays in discursive practice at all social sites; hence the socially and politically transformative power of contesting discourses. Critical discourse analysis is informed by this critical theory of language and regards the use of language as a form of social practice located within its specific historical context. Therefore, it is through engaging in the struggle over meaning and producing different 'truths' through the reappropriation of language that the possibility of social change exists. Employing narrative, linguistic and rhetorical analysis, this study identifies the discursive strategies and tactics utilised by feminist bloggers to combat and contest anti-choice health care legislation. The study further seeks to determine how arguments supportive of women's reproductive rights are framed and how feminist discourses are privileged while patriarchal discourse is contested. Drawing on public sphere theory, I argue that the feminist blogosphere constitutes a counter-public which facili tates the articulation and circulation of marginalised and counter-discourses. I conclude this study by examining the feminist blogopshere's role in promoting political change and transformation through alternative representations of women and their reproductive rights.
22
Okopny, Cara L. "Reconstructing Women's Identities: The Phenomenon Of Cosmetic Surgery In The United States." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2005. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/SFE0001111.
Full text
23
Pomerleau, Catherine A. "Among and between women: Califia Community, grassroots feminist education, and the politics of difference, 1975-1987." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280736.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation assesses a Los Angeles-based feminist educational alternative called Califia Community in the context of a cultural war between Second Wave feminists and members of the New Right. Analysis of oral histories with thirty-two participants (narrators) is supported by archival sources and narrators' personal files to historicize U.S. divisions over cultural mores and to shed light on the diversity and tactics among Second Wave feminists. In contrast to foundational scholarship, a reevaluation of National Organization for Women sources in association with California participants' actions and writings clarifies that the lesbian-straight split continued to divide the movement well into the 1980s and that the role of eastern leadership in feminism has been overstated. Califia Community demonstrates that lesbian feminists engaged in a complex attempt to combat multiple oppressions and to address the whole person in relation to society. Califia's diversity of attendees and education on sexism, homophobia, racism, and class bias reveals that a grassroots group could sustain heterogeneity but that identity-based politics exacerbated problems.
24
Lowery, Christina. "Protection or Equality? : A Feminist Analysis of Protective Labor Legislation in UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1998. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279082/.
Full textAbstract:
This study provides a feminist analysis of protective labor legislation in the Supreme Court case of UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc. History of protection rhetoric and precedented cases leading up to UAW are provided. Using a feminist analysis, this study argues that the victory for women's labor rights in UAW is short lived, and the cycle of protection rhetoric continues with new pro-business agendas replacing traditional justifications for "protecting" women in the work place. The implications of this and other findings are discussed.
25
Tobin, Amy. "Working together, working apart : feminism, art, and collaboration in Britain and the United States, 1970-81." Thesis, University of York, 2016. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/16445/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis offers a feminist reading of women’s art in Britain and North America in the 1970s. Through archival research and interviews, I trace and elaborate the social and political context for a range of art-making practices. Prompted by the organisational ideals of the Women’s Liberation Movement, specifically decentralisation and anti-hierarchy, I focus on collaborations between women across four chapters populated by a number of case studies. With reference to the work of theorists and philosophers, including Juliet Mitchell, Hannah Arendt, and bell hooks, I analyse the ambivalences that can accompany working together, and the transformations that can arise from coming apart. In Chapter One, I look at how artists were influenced by the form of feminist consciousness raising sessions, both in their own activism and in their artworks. From the Rip-Off File (1973) to What is Feminist Art? (1977) along with work by Hannah Wilke and Howardena Pindell, I examine how feminist artists created a space for women’s art that was itself tested by dissensus and critique. Chapter Two focuses on collaboration at a distance, through the International Dinner Party by Suzanne Lacy and Linda Preuss (1979), the Women’s Postal Art Event (1975-7), and the work made by Cecilia Vicuña while in exile in London from her native Chile post-1973. In Chapter Three I examine how artists used the home as a site for political work within the context of feminist pedagogy in California, squatting in London, and racialized gentrification in New York. Chapter Four looks at feminist exhibition-making, specifically Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists organized Lucy R. Lippard in 1980 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. I examine the difficult relationship between socialist feminist politics and working-class women artists. My conclusion reflects on work of historical research in the context of recent feminist exhibitions and activism.
26
Popa, Bogdan G. ""Parting company with the opinion of the world"| Shame and political agency in nineteenth century feminist activism." Thesis, Indiana University, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3617866.
Full textAbstract:
Liberal feminist theorists such as Martha Nussbaum restrict agency to conventional strategies, but in this dissertation I claim that feminists need to understand the value of other, unconventional performative tactics that can open up feminism to radical interventions. I not only support Judith Butler's claim about the need for "non-state-centered forms of agency and resistance" but also historicize the emergence of nonliberal strategies of political contestation, particularly in Victorian feminist activism. Although Victorian feminists are traditionally associated with liberalism, and figures such as John Stuart Mill and Josephine Butler have been used to criticize post-structuralist theorists, I show that some of their practices and interventions reveal a radical, nonliberal aspect to their feminism that strengthens the post-structuralist call for creative and innovative practices of democratic action. Nineteenth-century activists imagined various types of sexual and affective relationships that undermined the privileged role of the institution of marriage. They also used shaming and humiliating language to challenge traditional gender roles and produce profound social transformations.
Building on the activism of these Victorian feminists, I develop a conception of agency that politicizes tactics such as the use of shame, humiliation, silence, and nonconventional relationships. Because the liberal understanding of shame is insufficient, I offer an alternative queer conception that challenges the perception of shame as destructive. The central element of this conception is that shame not only generates negative feelings and low self-esteem but also has an important capacity to provoke political activism, such as strategies for resignifying political norms that excluded sex and gender marginals.
27
Clark, Caroline. "Ms. magazine : an ideological vehicle in a consumer setting." Thesis, McGill University, 1993. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=69627.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis traces the history and development of Ms. magazine, in its three incarnations, between 1972 and 1992. Since its inception as a distinctly feminist monthly, Ms. has drifted between two categories of popular cultural artifacts (mainstream consumer culture and feminist counterculture) while distingishing itself as the only national feminist monthly in the United States, a key economic and symbolic feminist institution. The author compares the economic bases, ideological orientations and readerships of Ms. three incarnations in order to examine and the ways in which an ideological vehicle negotiates a consumer setting like the women's magazine industry. While serving to highlight debates surrounding the limitations of liberal feminist ideology, the history and development of Ms. magazine also raises questions concerning the validity of categories like "mainstream consumer culture/feminist counterculture" where contemporary women's media are concerned.
28
Matsuyuki, Masami. "AN EXAMINATION OF THE PROCESS OF FORGIVENESS AND THE RELATIONSHIP AMONG STATE FORGIVENESS, SELF-COMPASSION, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING EXPERIENCED BY BUDDHISTS IN THE UNITED STATES." UKnowledge, 2011. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/edp_etds/1.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the process of forgiveness and the relationship among state forgiveness, self-compassion, and psychological well-being experienced by Buddhists in the United States. An integral feminist framework was developed for this mixed-method study.
For the quantitative component of this study, a convenience sample of 112 adults completed an online survey. Multiple regression analysis was performed to examine: (a) the impact of gender, age, and the years spent in Buddhist practice on state forgiveness and self-compassion; (b) the outcome of psychological well-being in relation to state forgiveness and self-compassion; and (c) self-compassion as a mediator for the relationship between state forgiveness and psychological well-being. Quantitative results indicated: (a) state forgiveness positively predicted psychological well-being; (b) the years spent in Buddhist practice positively predicted self-compassion; (c) self-compassion positively predicted psychological well-being; and (d) self-compassion partially mediated the relationship between state forgiveness and psychological well-being. Age did not predict any of the three primary variables. Gender did not predict state forgiveness.
For the qualitative component of this study, this researcher purposefully selected four adults from a local Buddhist community in central Kentucky and conducted two in-depth interviews to explore their subjective experiences of forgiveness within their own contexts. A holistic-content narrative analysis revealed unique features of each interviewee’s forgiveness process interwoven with the socio-cultural, family and relational contexts. From a phenomenological analysis, common themes and elements of the interviewees’ forgiveness processes emerged. Qualitative findings corresponded to the quantitative results concerning state forgiveness as a route to psychological well-being, the positive relationship between Buddhist practice and compassion, and the role of self-compassion in the relationship between state forgiveness and psychological well-being. Qualitative findings also suggested the following. First, two-way compassion toward self and the offender was a facilitating factor for forgiveness that may be unique to Buddhists. Second, one’s actual experience of forgiveness may encompass not only cognitive, affective, and behavioral changes, but also transformation of self and perspective on meaning and purpose in life. Third, Enright and his colleagues’ (1998) stage and process models of forgiveness were useful to understand Buddhists’ experiences and processes of forgiveness.
29
Panichelli, Meg Rose. "The Intersections of Good Intentions, Criminality, and Anti-Carceral Feminist Logic: a Qualitative Study that Explores Sex Trades Content in Social Work Education." PDXScholar, 2018. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4512.
Full textAbstract:
This study uses anti-carceral feminist logic to explore the cultural meanings, criminal implications, and neoliberal influence that shape the landscape of social work education about the sex trades in the United States and transnationally. "What are social work instructors teaching students about the sex trades in coursework?" is the question that directs the study, which uses a feminist qualitative methodology inclusive of intersectional feminist epistemology as well as direct content analysis. To answer this question, I analyzed 20 social work course syllabi from sex trade related courses across the contiguous United States and interviewed 20 social work instructors from 14 different states.
Study findings show that course content represents people in the sex trades primarily as victimized cisgender women and girls with a significant focus on sex trafficking, especially within the Global South. While there is some course content that portrays sex trade workers as having complex and autonomous experiences, this material is limited to courses that have "sex" or "sexuality" in the title (i.e. "sex trafficking" or "sexuality and social work" courses). Furthermore, course content that represents the intersectional experiences and impact of systemic violence encountered by trans women of color and LGBTQ+ people is underrepresented in the sample--confined to two course syllabi and visibly absent from remaining syllabi. The sample indicates the prevalence of carceral approaches to the sex trades with an unexamined and racially-biased emphasis upon rescue and/or incarceration. This project provides significant implications for social work education about the necessity of an anti-carceral feminist, intersectional, and consequently, an anti-oppressive approach to teaching about the sex trades.
30
Bonneau, Chris W. "Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the feminine voice." Virtual Press, 1998. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1100447.
Full textAbstract:
This paper examines whether Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg demonstrates any evidence of a "feminine voice" in her opinions. There has been much jurisprudential literature written recently regrading the possible existence of a "feminine voice." This paper surveyes the literature and defines what is meant by a "feminine voice." The paper proceeds to analyze some of Justice Ginsburg's opinions to determine if a "feminine voice" is present. This study focuses on four areas of law the literature suggests evidence of a "feminine voice" might be found: cases involving gender, race, the Establishment Clause, and physician-assisted suicide. With the exception of cases concerning race, no evidence of a "feminine voice" was found. In race cases, there is evidence to suggest that Justice Ginsburg arrives at her decision in a way that is different from her male colleagues. The lack of evidence of a "feminine voice" in the other areas does not mean that no such voice exists; rather, it is just not present in all of the decisions written by Justice Ginsburg. The paper concludes that, at least in cases involving race, Justice Ginsburg does reason in a "feminine voice." While this is a narrow finding, the fact that there is evidence of a "feminine voice," at least in some cases, suggests that gender does play a role in judicial decision-making at the United States Supreme Court level.Department of Political Science
31
Vano, Anne Margaret. "Linguistic predictors of treatment success among female substance abusers." Access restricted to users with UT Austin EID Full text (PDF) from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International, 2001. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3036603.
Full text
32
Conrad, Sarah M. "A Restorative Environmental Justice for the Prison Industrial Complex: a Transformative Feminist Theory of Justice." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2015. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc801925/.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation provides a feminist restorative model of environmental justice that addresses the injustices found within UNICOR’s e-waste recycling operations. A feminist restorative environmental justice challenges the presupposition that grassroots efforts, law and policy, medical and scientific research, and theoretical pursuits (alone or in conjunction) are sufficient to address the emotional and relational harm of environmental injustices. To eliminate environmental harms, this model uses collaborative dialogue for interested parties to prevent environmental harm. To encourage participation, a feminist restorative model accepts many forms of knowledge and truth as ‘legitimate’ and offers an opportunity for women to share how their personal experiences of love, violence, and caring differ from men and other women and connect to larger social practices. This method of environmental justice offers opportunities for repair, reparation and reintegration that can transform perspectives on criminality, dangerous practices and structures in the PIC, and all persons who share in a restorative encounter.
33
Listl, Bettina [Verfasser], and Michael [Akademischer Betreuer] Hochgeschwender. "In sisterhood and struggle : Black and White feminisms in the United States during the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975-1985 / Bettina Listl ; Betreuer: Michael Hochgeschwender." München : Universitätsbibliothek der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 2016. http://d-nb.info/113722701X/34.
Full text
34
Barrett, Autumn Rain Duke. "Childhood, Colonialism and Nation-Building: The Role of Childhood in the Construction of Race, Class and Gender in Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Virginia." W&M ScholarWorks, 2004. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539624386.
Full text
35
David, James Corbett. "The Politics of Emasculation: The Caning of Charles Sumner and Elite Southern Manhood on the Brink." W&M ScholarWorks, 2004. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626464.
Full text
36
Demaske, Chris. "A feminist interpretation of the First Amendment : reconceptualizing freedom, liberty and equality /." view abstract or download file of text, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/uoregon/fullcit?p3055684.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002.Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 266-277). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.
37
Taliaferro, Kevin C. "Influencing Gender Specific Perceptions of the Factors Affecting Women’s Career Advancement Opportunities in the United States." Scholar Commons, 2018. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7582.
Full textAbstract:
This research investigates the sociological, psychological, and physiological factors known to affect women’s career advancement opportunities. It examines how awareness and knowledge shared through the #MeToo (hashtag Me Too) movement influenced gender specific perceptions about the factors affecting women’s workplace opportunities. Finally, it recommends measures to alter the divergent gender perceptions that remain an obstacle to gender equality in the workplace.
This study was conducted because gender inequalities continue in the U.S. workplace in 2018. Currently women fail to advance in careers at the same rate as men, and they are paid 21% less for similar work with equal skills and experience. Women comprise approximately 51% of the U.S. population and 47% of the workforce, so equality would dictate a one-to-one male to female ratio throughout all levels of government and private industry. The current male to female ratio in the U.S. Congress is four-to-one. The male to female executive ratio in Fortune 500 companies is three-to-one, and in the U.S. Government it is two-to-one.
The researcher conducted a mixed method experimental study by comparing pre- and post-treatment interview and survey data to determine how much awareness and knowledge shared through the #MeToo mass media event impacted gender specific perceptions of women’s equality struggles in the workplace.
The qualitative interview analysis indicated a moderate shift from divergent gender perceptions in Study 1 to convergent viewpoints in Study 2 following the #MeToo media events. The quantitative analysis of pre- and post-treatment survey studies supported the qualitative findings and showed a 43% reduction in the gender perception gap in the post-event assessment.
With outcomes from three independent qualitative and quantitative investigations aligning, the researcher concluded the overall statistical results demonstrate a strong impact on men’s and women’s perceptions and a largely reduced gender perception gap following the #MeToo media events. Because it is unknown if those changes are permanent, the researcher believes future research could focus on awareness, education, and accountability initiatives to more adequately address gender equality problems in the workplace and bring about lasting change.
38
Sukovaty, Beckey D. "A Feminist Philosophical Critique of Domestic Mediation (ADR) Practices in the United States: Realizing Mary Parker Follett's Theory of Empowerment." Thesis, Connect to title online (Scholars' Bank), 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/8480.
Full text
39
Nelli, Debora Kay. "Gender Representations in U.S. Ed.D. Dissertations: A Feminist Content Analysis." PDXScholar, 2014. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1700.
Full textAbstract:
Educational access, achievement and opportunity for students and educators in U.S. educational institutions is influenced and often limited by gender. Although the U.S. Glass Ceiling Commission reports that the gender equity values, beliefs and commitments of institutional leaders are a key factor in reducing institutional gender inequities (U.S. Dept of Labor, 1995), very little is known about the current preparation or evaluation of educational leadership values, especially at the doctoral level (Hess & Kelly, 2007, Grogan & Andrews, 2002; Levine, 2005; Murphy & Vriesenga, 2004).
This study utilized feminist content analysis as a conceptual framework and research methodology to examine the collective gender equity values, beliefs and commitments of educational leaders represented in a key textual artifact of doctoral study, the Educational Doctorate (Ed.D.) dissertation.
This sequential mixed method content analysis examines 15,014 dissertation titles of Ed.D dissertations completed from 112 U.S. public doctoral granting institutions between 1998-2007 to identify 1185 dissertations indicating gender in their title. A purposeful sample of 177 abstracts was selected from emergent themes for further analysis. The final research phase examined a purposeful sample of 9 complete dissertation texts selected from the analysis of the abstracts. The research focused on two questions, 1.) How prevalent is gender focused inquiry in recent Ed.D. dissertation scholarship, from 1998-2007? 2.) What are the cultural gender beliefs and gender conceptualizations represented in Ed.D. dissertation scholarship from 1998-2007?
The findings indicate gender focused inquiry is not prevalent in Ed.D. dissertation titles, in public doctoral granting institutions from 1998-2007; only 7.4 % indicated any mention of gender. The findings also revealed great institutional variation in the prevalence of gender focused dissertations in the 112 institutions examined.
Three themes also emerged from patterns of representations illuminating problematic gender cultural beliefs, 1,) male leadership and intellectual authority is privileged, 2.) Black males are "othered", 3.) Latinas are silenced. Three additional problematic themes of gender bias are revealed because of scanty representation in the sample, 1.) LGTBIQ issues silenced, 2.) Title IX trivialized and 3.) Feminism marginalized. Each of these three gender focused categories represented less than 1% of the Ed.D. dissertations completed in U.S. public doctoral granting universities between 1998-2007.
The findings have implications for program planning of doctoral Ed. D. programs for the development of gender equity dispositions. The findings also contribute to the discipline by adding to the knowledge of Ed. D. dissertation content. This report includes recommendation for future research and practice.
40
Rhodes, Molly Rae. "Doctoring culture : literary intellectuals, psychology and mass culture in the twentieth-century United States /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 1997. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9809139.
Full text
41
Downs, Kiersten H. ""Beautifully Awful": A Feminist Ethnography of Women Veterans' Experiences with Transition From Military Service." Scholar Commons, 2017. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7018.
Full textAbstract:
As issues of gender inequality in the military are addressed, women will continue to fill jobs traditionally occupied by men, and ultimately take on a greater percentage of leadership responsibility. For these reasons, women will remain the fastest growing population within our active duty forces. An increased need for research, advocacy, and resources for programs and services designed specifically for women veterans is necessary in order to prepare for an upsurge in the numbers of women who will be seeking services in the years to come. This research utilized a feminist ethnographic approach for data collection and analysis. Data was collected using mixed methods consisting of an online survey (n=915), telephone interviews with women veterans and community reintegration specialists (n=31), and participant observation at veteran focused events. This study provides an in depth understanding of US women veterans’ experiences both in the military and after, emphasizing the different gendered experiences of participants. Among the many findings, I conclude that women veterans negotiated and performed gender in a way that worked for them within the professional militarized environments that they were a part of. However, upon leaving the military, many experience challenges associated with having to renegotiate gender, often times in civilian workplace settings where traditional aspects of masculinity and femininity are still upheld as societal norms. This research is meant to contribute to a growing body of literature on veteran transition and help fill the existing gap in anthropology of the military on the intersections of gender, gendered role-making, and military service. It will be of interest to lawmakers, policy experts, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and community stakeholders tasked with identifying the short-term and long-term challenges affecting women veterans as they enter civilian life after service, and how to appropriately tailor programs and services to meet the needs of the population.
42
Jones, Sheila. "Not "part of the job" sexual harassment policy in the U.S., the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and women's economic citizenship, 1975-1991 /." Bowling Green, Ohio : Bowling Green State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=bgsu1217964889.
Full text
43
Omole, Christina. "Human Trafficking: The Health of Men Forced into Labor Trafficking in the United States." ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/1980.
Full textAbstract:
Human trafficking is a criminal act that occurs globally. It affects both women and men, but most studies have focused on female victims; few have explored trafficked men or their related health issues. Though there are many forms of trafficking, it is believed that most male victims are trafficked as forced labor. Using gender schema theory as a framework, this quantitative study examined archival data to identify the types of trafficking men are subjected to, their health ailments, and how these differ from the health ailments of trafficked women. Archival data from 124 individuals subjected to human trafficking in Florida were analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis, one-way ANOVA, Mann Whitney U, and Fisher's exact tests. Findings indicated that males were more likely to have been labor trafficked compared to other forms of trafficking, and that labor trafficked persons were not more susceptible to health ailments than were sex trafficked persons. Also, there was a significant difference in health conditions between male and female victims, with females reporting more issues such as malnourishment, skin rash, and anxiety. These findings help to alter the misperception that men are traffickers only by recognizing them to be victims as well. Implications for social change include increased awareness of male trafficking in health care policies and human trafficking prevention efforts.
44
McCabe, Heather Kirsten. "Gender Difference in Working Parents' Perceptions of Work/Family Conflict and the Role of Occupational Prestige." PDXScholar, 2015. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2530.
Full textAbstract:
As many Americans move away from the traditional homemaker-breadwinner family model, research on gender and work/family conflict has become increasingly important and the question of gender difference in experiences of work/family conflict continues to be relevant. While there is research that shows women tend to experience significantly greater work/family conflict than men, there are also studies that have shown little or no gender difference, and some that offer evidence that men are reporting more work/family conflict. This study contributes to the debate by examining gender and occupational prestige in regard to working parents' perceptions of work-to-family and family-to-work spillover, with a quantitative analysis of national probability sampled survey data from the General Social Survey's Quality of Working Life Module from the years 2006 and 2010. The findings indicate that fathers are reporting significantly more work/family conflict than mothers, and that higher prestige work is associated with greater work/family conflict, but occupational prestige has a gendered effect with work-to-family spillover and is found to be especially salient for fathers. Overall, this study demonstrates the need for policy-makers and employers to acknowledge men's parenthood. The findings are evidence that there is a need for incentivized paternity leave initiatives in the United States, as well as more universal employee work/life programs that address the barriers to fathers utilizing family-accommodating benefits.
45
Abril, Samantha E. "Sterilized by the State: A Feminist Analysis of Eugenics, Forced Sterilization, and Reparations in North Carolina." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/576.
Full textAbstract:
Although, the histories of forced sterilizations and eugenics practices have been all but forgotten by most, these subjects gained national attention again when the state of North Carolina repealed its sterilization law in 2003. The history of forced sterilization in the United States began with a eugenics based demand to wipe out populations that were constructed as inferior. The evolution of who was sterilized shifted in accordance to changing national social perception of who was ‘unfit’ to reproduce, from the developmentally disabled to ‘immoral’ and ‘irresponsible’ women.
North Carolina has also taken unprecedented steps towards providing reparations for the living victims of the statute. The history, current sentiments, and unique components of compulsory sterilization in North Carolina help to illustrate why the government has taken such proactive steps in offering restitution while others have not.
What happened in North Carolina and throughout the eugenics movement in the United States are poignant examples of the power of social constructions.
Social constructions allows those with power, in this case the state, to enforce them, using policy and other mechanisms, to divide up members of society. With this power to divide groups of people comes the ability to use this constructed sense of otherness as a means to control and mistreat these populations.
46
Ayala, Rebecca. "A Path Towards Visibility: Chicana Feminist Organizing During the 1970s." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1945.
Full textAbstract:
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Chicanas gradually began to politically organize. Through a significant focus on the political life of Francisca Flores and the CFMN, this thesis analyzes the specific political organizing tools she and other Chicana feminist leaders used during the decade between 1970 and 1980. Rather than evaluate the success or failure of the organizations, it instead examines the political methods they used including individual leadership, coalition building, community engagement, and art. It attempts to demonstrate that prominent Chicana feminist activists such as Flores, NietoGomez of Las Hijas de Cuauhtémoc and later Encuentro Femenil, former Brown Beret Gloria Arellanes, and Los Angeles based artist Judy Baca all used these methods in specific ways in order to promote the visibility of Chicana feminism and their communities, which has had an enduring legacy for the movement. Through a comparative analysis of these methods, this thesis illustrates how each of these figures and organizations developed a Chicana feminist movement that balanced grassroots and national organizing with a conscious commitment to visibility of community, rooted in intersectional theory.
47
Gillin, Kate Fraser. ""From eager lips came shrill hurrahs": Women, gender, and racial violence in South Carolina, 1865--1900." W&M ScholarWorks, 2007. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623512.
Full textAbstract:
In the years following the Civil War, southerners struggled to adapt to the changes wrought by the war. Many, however, worked to resist those changes. In particular, southern men fought the revised racial and gender roles that resulted from defeat and emancipation. Southern men felt emasculated by both events and sought to consolidate the control they had enjoyed before the war. In their efforts to restore their pre-war hegemony, these men used coercion and violence with regularity.;White southern women were often as adamant as their male counterparts. Women of the elite classes were most eager to bolster antebellum ideals of womanhood, the privileges of which they enjoyed and guarded carefully. In keeping with the turmoil of the war, however, white women endorsed, encouraged, and engaged in acts of racial violence alongside their men. Such behavior may have been intended to preserve the antebellum order, but it served only to alter it.;In addition, black women were as determined to carve out a measure of womanhood for themselves as powerfully as white women worked to keep it from them. Black women asserted their rights as mothers, wives, and independent free women in the post-war years. Ironically, they too participated in acts of intimidation and racial violence in an effort to safeguard their rights. Such activities did not simply force the inclusion of black women in white definitions of womanhood, but altered the meaning of womanhood for both races.;The fields of battle on which these men and women engaged included the struggle for land and labor immediately following the war's end; the rise of black politicization and the reaction of white Democrats; the creation of the Ku Klux Klan as an agent of both gender and politics; the election of 1876 in which men and women of both races used the political contest to assert their competing gender definitions; and the rise of lynching as the final, desperate act of antebellum white manhood. Despite the reactionary nature of white women's activism, the fact of their activism and the powerful presence of black women in these violent exchanges reshaped the nature of southern gender roles forever.
48
Westcot, andrea Kathleen. "Outlaw Reproduction: Childbearing and the Making of Colonial Virginia, 1634-1785." W&M ScholarWorks, 2013. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539623365.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation examines discourses and experiences of reproduction in Virginia, 1630-1785. I define reproduction as an experiential reality that contoured women's lives in specific ways, as a central demographic phenomenon that shaped colonial populations, and as a discourse of power in the colonial project. Informed by feminist theory, queer theory, and postcolonial theory, the dissertation examines the relationship between reproduction and colonialism in the development of a plantation economy in Virginia. I draw on a varied archive of court documents, colonial records, newspapers and other print culture, plantation records, diaries, letters, and medical texts. Chapter 1, "'A considerable parcel of breeders': Reproduction and Discourses of Racial Slavery in Colonial Virginia," examines the ways that development of racial slavery in Virginia was based, in part, on the appropriation of black women's reproduction. I examine the roots of the 1662 law that defined slavery as a condition of birth, finding the legal and cultural precedent for the law in the conflation of servitude and bastardy. I further examine the vernacular discourses of slavery that used reproduction to define enslaved people (especially women) as a kind of property legally similar to livestock. I close the chapter with a discussion of the Virginia House of Burgesses debates around defining slaves as real or personal property, and I argue that these debates were a consequence of defining slavery as a status of birth. In Chapter 2, "Wicked, Dangerous, and Ungoverned: The Transgressive Possibilities of Reproduction," I examine the ways that childbearing could transgress colonial hierarchies and boundaries, especially in cases of bastardy and interracial birth. Throughout the chapter, I am particularly interested in understanding the relationship between domination and transgression, and the specific ways that reproduction could inhabit the space between those two poles. In Chapter 3, "Knowledge 'not fit to be discust publiquely': Colonialism and the Transformation of Reproductive Knowledge," I examine the ways that colonialism transformed Virginians' reproductive episteme. I attempt to reconstruct knowledge about reproduction in this space and time, and I show how childbearing became a potent intimate zone for the negotiating of colonial power relations. In the final chapter, '"She lives in an infant country that wants nothing but people': Discourses of Reproduction, Print Culture, and Virginia's Colonial Project," I examine the competing discourses of reproduction that informed Virginia's colonial project. I argue that two competing discourses about reproduction - one that privileged "prolific reproduction" and another that privileged "rational reproduction" - show the ways that the experience of colonialism transformed ideas about reproduction. This transformation occurred because the exigencies of the colonial project prioritized the maintaining of colonial boundaries and hierarchies over the early notion of peopling a "virgin" land.
49
Huebenthal, Jan. "Injury & Resistance: Centering HIV/AIDS Histories in Times of Queer Equality." W&M ScholarWorks, 2019. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1563898925.
Full textAbstract:
Using methods of critical queer genealogy and discourse analysis, Injury & Resistance historicizes the HIV/AIDS epidemic through four lenses—activism, criminalization, memory, and “post-AIDS” queer health—in national and transnational U.S. locales from 1987 to the present. Unlike in the 1980s, when white middle-class gay men were the most visible demographic of what was known as the “gay plague,” today’s American AIDS epidemic is becoming more and more racialized. And unlike 30 years ago, HIV today is a chronic condition that is effectively treatable with antiretroviral drug regimens. Concurrent with the medical survivability of HIV/AIDS, queer Americans have won legal rights to marry, serve openly in the military, and adopt and raise children. Meanwhile, however, for many the AIDS crisis has remained just that: a crisis. If current patterns persist, today one in two African American gay men will become HIV-positive within his lifetime—amidst a healthcare landscape in which racial, regional, and socioeconomic disparities abound. To date, little scholarly work has attended to how the epidemic’s American histories, having fueled an LGBT politics of individual “equality,” have in fact produced these stark simultaneities in which HIV is a chronic reality for some but has remained an emergency for others. Indebted to Michel Foucault, Injury & Resistance historicizes this evolution through a queer “history of the present” that explores the non-linear and asynchronous motions between and among AIDS past and HIV present. In the absence of a multitemporal critique, I argue, we risk ceding the urgency of HIV/AIDS to the past and preclude confronting what is an ongoing public health epidemic. Sources include oral histories from the ACT UP Oral History Project, memoirs of survival, activist photography, medical science statistics and publications, public health campaigns, newspaper records, and documentary film, as well as archival holdings from the Smithsonian National Archive Center, the Archiv der Sozialen Bewegungen (Archive of Social Movements) in Hamburg, Germany, the Special Collections at the James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), and the New York Public Library, among others. This diverse body of sources re-contextualizes national and transnational U.S. AIDS histories that anticipate an ongoing crisis with peculiar dualities: yesterday yet today, ghostly yet present, and acute yet chronic. Arranged loosely from past to present, the four chapters and epilogue present evidence, readings, theories, and speculations, listening for past and present echoes of HIV/AIDS histories that reverberate in experiential chasms between injury and resistance. Chapters present a critical genealogy of feminist activism in the New York chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) from 1987 to 1993, explore a 1987 West German court case against African American ex-soldier Linwood Boyette for alleged HIV transmission, trace Derridean hauntology and queer temporalities in two AIDS memoirs and the National AIDS Memorial Grove, place narratives of “post-AIDS” queer health in relation to neoliberal LGBT rights politics, and consider Uganda’s 2011 “Kill the Gays Bill” as a transcultural circulation of U.S. anti-queer affect and violence. Throughout, this dissertation insists that the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis, with its rich histories of resistance and dissent, must again become cornerstones of contemporary queer culture and politics.
50
Ono, Sarah Sachiko. "From Redfield To Redford: Hollywood and understandings of contemporary American community." Diss., University of Iowa, 2010. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/567.
Full textAbstract:
This research investigates contemporary conceptual understandings of Hollywood and Community, seeking to understand how the two, independently and in relation to each other, are made real for the participants ("insiders") engaged in the American film and television industry. The ethnographic field research was conducted over a period of eighteen consecutive months and supplemented by return visits over three of the years that followed. Data collection took place in locations where "Hollywood" was performed, primarily in Los Angeles, California, but also in the State of Utah and Cannes, France. I used anthropological methods, such as interviews and participant-observation, as well as what I term a "working methodology" that required working in a variety of short-term jobs as a means to access the population of study. This working methodology provided unique insight into the critical element of positionality in Hollywood and situated me as an "insider" at times in my own research.
This exploratory research concentrates on "locating" Hollywood in a discussion that seeks to capture the invisible complexity of a map that is both literal and imagined: a "place" made up of social and economic networks, marked spaces, and historical connections to a literal landscape. The research suggests that Hollywood is perceived to be a community and, that community membership is defined by work and co-constructed through a dynamic of insider/outsider interaction. An individual's relationship to, and perception of, the Hollywood community is heavily influenced by her position as well by discursive tropes of Hollywood recognized by "insiders". The presentation of data is organized around examples that index Hollywood, in particular for "insiders": Hollywood-speak, time as it is perceived in the setting of Hollywood, and the material culture that is locally called "S.W.A.G.". The idea of Hollywood -- whether as an industry, an institution, or a myth -- has proven its staying-power over time, so too has the idea of Community. Both may prove to be intangible with the specifics up for debate among scholars, but both can also be expected to remain in public discourse and popular imagination for a long time to come.